The Daily Novel

It was a misty day. Lundy was invisible and even the locas coastline was quite indistinct. We turned off the main road at Fremington, attracted by a signpost to the Quay, which we had never visited. It was a long road ending in a sort of causeway along the side of the River Taw, empty of water at this point on the tide.

We eventually reached the main estuary where there was a rusty old dredger tied up by the Quay. Facing it was a very smart railway station, which was apparently opened in 1848, when Fremington Quay was the busiest port between Bristol and Land’s End. It exported clay and supported a local pottery.

Now it is enjoying a new life as a heritage centre. The station itself, bearded gent told us, was a fake, a replica of the one the Victorians had built at the height of the railway boom.

Today it was crowded with cyclists following the Tarka Trail, and stopping to enjoy the current station’s chief product; Devon cream teas. Best scones we have tasted this trip.

Worth a visit. But you won’t see any trains. The last one ran in 1969.